Judge says same-sex health-coverage ban biased

COURTS

Published 4:00 am, Friday, January 27, 2012

A federal judge signaled Thursday that she's likely to strike down a federal law that denies long-term health coverage to the same-sex domestic partners of state employees in California, saying it appears to be based on prejudice against gays and lesbians.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland said domestic partners could join a lawsuit challenging an aspect of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act - its exclusion of same-sex couples from federal tax benefits that are essential to participation in a long-term health care program for state employees.

The suit is one of two in Bay Area federal courts challenging the 1996 law, which denies federal marital benefits to same-sex spouses.

President Obama said in February 2011 that he considered the law unconstitutional and would no longer defend it in court, a role now assigned to lawyers hired by House Republican leaders.

The Obama administration argued before Wilken, however, that only same-sex spouses should be allowed to sue over long-term health coverage because Congress had rational grounds for limiting tax breaks to legal relatives and excluding domestic partners.

But Wilken said same-sex couples in California "are relegated to registered domestic partnerships because legal marriage is prohibited for them." Congress "saw registered domestic partnership as a marriage-like status," she said, and based its decision on the couples' sexual orientation.

While the ruling determined only that the suit can proceed on behalf of registered partners as well as spouses, Wilken indicated - as she did in another ruling a year ago - that she is inclined to overturn the law.

Federal officials "have failed to show a plausible, legitimate rationale for excluding registered domestic partners from (the law's) list of eligible family members (for the tax benefits), and the court can think of none," Wilken wrote.

She said Congress had taken numerous actions to deny recognition or benefits to same-sex domestic partners, including its refusal from 1992 through 2001 to allow Washington, D.C., to spend any funds to establish a local domestic partner registry.

House floor statements by supporters of that ban indicate that it was based on "antipathy towards same-sex relationships," Wilken said. Likewise, she said, there is evidence that the exclusion of domestic partners from tax benefits related to long-term care was "motivated by antigay animus" - an unconstitutional basis for any law, according to Supreme Court precedent.

The ruling adds hundreds of couples to the lawsuit, said Claudia Center, a lawyer for state employees and their partners.